BlackBerry's iconic keyboard patent has expired
BlackBerry's iconic keyboard patent has expired
Let's all close our eyes and go back to 2009 so we can feel the thrill of typing our first email on the go.
I had two BlackBerry devices for work, right about the time they were going away. I'd heard the keyboard was good on earlier models but it seemed like the quality had gotten pretty cheap on the later phones. The BlackBerry 10 OS on my last phone was actually pretty good, and probably would've kept them in the market if they'd launched it 5 years earlier.
My 2001-era Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 PDA had the best slide out keyboard ever made, nothing has come close at all. A CF wifi card brought it so close to being a smart phone before there were smart phones.
I would buy it today as a phone if they'd just remake the original with an updated linux with QT equivalent option and updated screen hardware.
remember some of the older phones had a sliding keyboard from under the phone.
I never had a blackberry, but gained a hatred of them. Not for anything the phone was, but at how bad at software they were. The blackberry software to allow them to read emails from the company mail server was an over bloated, buggy and slow POS. It would forever break and the solution was always to remove and re-add it which would take a day and disrupt email for everyone.
But some CEO "needed" to use a blackberry as it looked corporate.
Hopefully that means somebody other than Unihertz will make a keyboard phone.
I don’t need it to be super high end, I’d just rather not own a Chinese made phone with all the data they send back.
That said, as a Canadian, it’s always fun to look back at Blackberry’s history and remember a time when a home-grown gadget was the star of the tech world.
Others that fit description were ATI Techologies (now the AMD graphics card division that makes Radeon) and Nortel networks, a maker of corporate and commercial telecom gear (including hardware routers and firewalls).
I have a Unihertz Titan and love it. I guess they skirted around the keyboard patent. https://www.unihertz.com/products/titan
The LG Env2 would have been the perfect smartphone form factor, change my view.
Oooh I might look into that once my 3310 dies
Blackberry's design patents have expired as well. So you can go nuts.
Hah, yeah, I had a work one in latter days, too, and there was definitely a sense of weird self-importance associated with it you don't get from touchscreens.
I don't know if people reviling virtual keyboards would get much from it, though. Honestly, typing on it was just as annoying. I am probably faster and more accurate using swipe inputs than I was on that thing.
Oooooh guuurlll!
I was pretty good with T9 back in the day, then the keyboard on the BB Pearl changed everything. I loved the keyboard on the BB Curve the best, banged out tons of messages with friends with BB messenger.
I used a Q10 as my first phone and I miss the keyboard so much, hopefully someone does something cool now ;)
Any takers? Any?
Best keyboard I ever had was a Motorola Q. The phone itself was mediocre, but great keyboard.
